This Light Between Us is the heartbreaking story of two teens whose long-distance friendship is ripped apart by the events of World War II.
Ten-year-old Charlie Levy, who lives in Paris, France begins writing Japanese-American, Alex Maki in March of 1935 as part of a letter exchange program with an American school. However Charlie's excitement over corresponding is not matched by Alex, who doesn't want to write letters to a girl. However, three years later in 1938, Alex and Charlie find themselves continuing to correspond with one another. At this time Alex reveals to Charlie that he does not have blond hair and blue eyes but is in fact a dark haired Japanese American. Although upset, Charlie forgives Alex for this lie.
At first the Maki's believe things will settle down and life will return as it was before. But it soon becomes evident that Japan has awakened a sleeping giant and along with it, the deep-rooted prejudice towards Nisei and Issei.
At school Alex feels "his Japaneseness more keenly" and has racist graffiti scrawled on his locker. His homeroom teacher tells Alex and another Japanese American student not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Within three days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans cannot travel more than five miles from home, cannot have radios, their bank accounts are frozen and must register at police stations.
Then Alex and his brother Frank return home one day after school to find that there father has been taken away. They learn that other families of Japanese heritage have had their homes searched, so they decide to destroy everything Japanese in their home, anything linking them to Japan with whom the United States is now at war.
Meanwhile in France, Charlie is also experiencing racism. Because she is Jewish, they are not allowed to use radios, ride bicycles, have a phone or use the public phone. Jews can't use parks, theatres, swimming pools, cafes or libraries. Many of her Jewish friends have fled Paris but Charlie refuses to leave her beloved city. A family friend, Monsieur Schafer wants Charlie's parents to flee to Nice but her Papa refuses. In her letters to Alex she tells him how the city is changing, how people first resisted the Nazis by painting V's everywhere but how she now experiences harassment on the subway.
In January of 1942, the FBI show up at the Maki home and ransack it. In late March, Alex and his family learn that all Japanese persons will be evacuated from Bainbridge Island by the end of the month. A curfew for all Japanese on the island is also imposed. When Frank attempts to play in the exhibition charity game against their archrival West Seattle High, he is pulled off the field and taken home by the police.
On March 30, 1942, Alex and his family are taken from their home. They are taken by military truck to Eagle Harbor where they along with over two hundred Issei and Nisei are loaded onto a ferry that takes them across Puget Sound to Seattle. For two days they travel by train and bus far inland, to Manzanar War Relocation Center. The prison camp is dirty, dusty, unfinished, with barracks that offer no privacy and little protection from the elements. In all this time Alex still has not received any further letters from Charlie.
A letter in June, 1942 reveals that things are deteriorating in France. Even worse, Charlie's letter is left unfinished. A letter in July informs Alex that Charlie is hiding in her father's factory waiting for the return of her father and mother who are at their apartment packing suitcases. They have finally decided to flee to Nice. Her letter ends so that Monsieur Schafer can post it in Nice. In October, Charlie writes to say that her parents never returned to the factory and the half-packed suitcases in their apartment indicated that her parents had been taken. Eventually Charlie was also captured and taken to the Velodrome d'Hiver along with thousands of other Jews. Fortunately, Monsieur Schafer is able to rescue Charlie from a camp, Beaune-la-Rolande by paying off those in charge. She is now living in hiding along with a Sinti family. Alex does not know this will be the last letter he received from Charlie.
In December, 1942, the clerk in the post office at Manzanar gives him a packet of his letters that have been returned. He learns from another man in the camp that the Germans invaded the unoccupied Vichy zone of France. All mail to France has now ceased.
As the months pass in the prison camp, Alex sees the toll it takes on his mother and his older brother Frank. Their petitions to free their father are unsuccessful but this is kept from their mother. A camp riot over poor living conditions result in the deaths of several Japanese Americans, further angering everyone.
Then one cold winter night in early 1943, Alex has a vision of Charlie. His volunteer work at the camp newspaper gives him information about events happening in Europe and it's not good. He learns that thousands of French Jews have been deported. Another distressing vision in March is of Charlie as a prisoner, gray, drab, skinny, with a shorn head and a number tattooed on her forearm. She begs him to find her. It is these visions plus the promise of release of his father should he enlist, that pushes Alex into the decision to join the army.
Alex's assignment into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit of Japanese-American soldiers, leads him into the European theatre of war. Alex is on a mission, to defeat the Nazis and find Charlie before it's too late.
Discussion
This Light Between Us tells the story of two teens, in two different countries, encountering racial hatred in a time of war. It is also a love story, born out of a friendship developed through years of writing letters to one another. Their story is told mainly by Alex Maki while Charlie Levy's story is told through her letters to Alex.
Author Andrew Fukuda offers a compelling story in a realistic setting that incorporates many historical details and events. The evacuation of all Japanese from the West Coast, the incarceration in Manzanar prison camp, the riots by Japanese over living conditions, the 442nd Regiment, as well as the deportation, imprisonment and murder of hundreds of thousands of French Jews are some of those events captured in this novel.
A main focus of the novel is the racism both Alex and Charlie experience: Alex as a Japanese-American in the United States and Charlie as a French Jew in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France. The racist policies their countries enact change their lives forever, with devastating consequences. Fukuda captures with unsettling clarity the terrible conditions and treatment endured by Japanese Americans as they are forced out of their homes and businesses on the West Coast and into prison camps.
The feelings of anger, betrayal and hopelessness, Japanese Americans, called Issei (Japanese immigrants) and Nisei (second generation Japanese born in America) experienced during the war as they were relocated to prison camps are very realistically portrayed. For example when Alex and Frank come home after school and discover their father has been arrested they are both angry and afraid. " 'How can they just take Father?' Alex says, incredulous.He looks at Father's chair at the dining table. Father, gone. His presence ripped away, leaving a gaping black hole in the universe..." Fearful of what the police might do, Alex's family destroys everything Japanese in their home. "For the next few hours, they throw into a pile outside anything remotely Japanese: ceramic rick bowls, chopsticks, novels, kimonos, Hinamatsuri and Tango no Sekku dolls, phonographs by Noriko Awaya, old photo albums, Mother's favourite kintsugi ceramic cups and bowls, calendars with prints of Utagawa Hiroshige's work." Alex's mother also adds in all of Grandma's old letters and they light fire to the entire pile. "Two minutes later, and there's nothing left. Decades of thoughts and hopes and feelings turned to ashes, forever disappeared." For many Japanese Americans (and Japanese Canadians) this loss of connection to their culture and their past would be only the beginning. They would lose their homes and businesses, sent to prison camps (politely termed "internment camps") and some would lose their lives as a result of the harsh conditions, poor food, and crowded living barracks.
Charlie's experiences as a French Jew are not quite so detailed, but her fate is no less disturbing and is tragic. For Charlie, her experiences are recounted in her letters to Alex. They portray her feelings as war inches closer: there is the hope that things will be fine, the growing realization that her world around her is collapsing, the loss of her parents and then her fear and loneliness before her disappearance. Fukuda incorporates a touch of romantic fantasy, with Alex's visions of Charlie in terrible distress. This serves as a major impetus to his enlistment; he needs to find Charlie.
A significant portion of This Light Between Us portrays fighting by the 442nd, the unit Alex Maki is assigned to. Fukuda sets his character in the battle the 442nd will be forever remembered for, the Rescue of the Lost Battalion. This situation developed in the Vosges Mountains of northern France in October, 1944 when the 1st Battalion of the 141st Regiment became separated from their fellow soldiers and were surrounded by several German units. Unless the Germans were forced to retreat, the battalion was doomed. Attempts to reach the 1st Battalion by several other American units were unsuccessful. It took six days of brutal fighting, including hand to hand combat, before the Japanese-Americans were able to reach the trapped soldiers. They received Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars for their tremendous bravery. Fukuda's portrayal of the fighting makes for exciting reading and gives young readers a good sense of the reality of war and the sacrifice made by a segregated unit of Japanese soldiers a country that treated them so wrongly.
This Light Between Us is one of the stars of historical fiction of 2020. There are plenty of themes to explore and historical events to research in greater depth. The novel takes its title from the paper lanterns both Charlie and Alex light and set afloat, Charlie's lantern in the Seine, Alexi's in the Atlantic Ocean in the hope they will find the other across time and space.
Fukuda offers readers a Bibliography at the back of the novel. He found the inspiration for this novel based on the facts that Anne Frank had an American penpal and that a "A subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp was liberated on April 29, 1945, by a segregated all-Japanese American military unit." These two facts along with some research led to this novel. This novel is well written, engaging and highly recommended.
You can read more about the Rescue of the Lost Battalion at the Densho Encyclopedia.
Book Details:
The Light Between Us by Andrew Fukuda
New York: Tom Doherty Associates Book 2019
382 pp.
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